


Attempting for Skies

by Ntjnke



Category: The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Genre: Don't read if RPF squicks you, Gen, RPF is still FICTION, This is RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:05:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2029590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ntjnke/pseuds/Ntjnke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let's watch a version of Jon Stuart Leibowitz grow up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Attempting for Skies

**Disclaimer:** All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

 

 

_Attempting for Skies_

 

 

Jon stood at the kitchen counter layering bologna onto sandwich bread. His hair dripped water into his eyes, and he impatiently swiped at it while trying to avoid getting mayonnaise on his face. One day, he woud cut it and it would behave. Until then, he would deal with it as he always had. By avoiding it and sticking it under a hat.

A sandwich with fruit and a juice box were packed for his mom. Larry got the same thing, but chips instead of fruit. He was more likely to eat the chips, and honestly, they were cheaper so Jon preferred not to waste money packing something that he wouldn't even eat.

Years of packing lunches had made his timing perfect, and by the time his mom bustled into the kitchen, her hair half out of her hot rollers, everything was ready, laid out on the table for the two of them to pick up. Wiping his hands on the table, he turned to her and smiled, holding out his hands for the curlers she'd otherwise forget to put back in the bathroom.

Which reminded him. Larry had said that he needed the car after work. He needed to call him and make sure he reminded Mom that he was taking it. Otherwise, there was going to be drama, and to be honest, he just wasn't up for it today.

As Marian got into her car, he waved out the kitchen window and felt a sort of satisfaction that at least his mother appreciated that he tried to help around the house. She told him so, every day before she ran, already late, for work.

Every night, yawning, before she went up to sleep.

It made it easier it it's own way. It made him feel like he wasn't wasting his time, sitting at his mother's dining table, her bills spread in front of him, balancing her check book and carefully writing out checks, putting them in stamped envelopes.

Jon splayed out all of his family's unpaid bills and his copy of his mother's accounts. With each bill that was paid off, he checked the bill with read ink and and substracted the debit from his notepad, then made a passing note of how much he should deposit this month to help keep them in the black.

In two hours, he had a neat pile of bills to be sent off, and the Leibowitzs were, almost, balanced.

Smiling, Jon took the pen out of his mouth and wrote down a passing thought on the spare pad of paper he always had handy.

His father was supposed to drop by at eleven. It was only another two hours, and to be honest, he could use the time to write out a thought or two that had been going through his head. The house was quiet and was as good as any other place to figure out how to say what so far he had only been able to think.

And, quite truthfully, Jon didn't trust his father.

According to Marian, Don had said he would be dropping off some old baseball equipiment that Larry had asked for. Something about Larry wanting to start a team and Don had been so nice to donate some of the equipment he never used anymore since he moved to the city.

It just seemed to Jon, listening to the conversation between his mom and his brother, that it was awfully suspicious that his father was dropping by in the middle of the day, when neither his ex-wife or his son were likely to be home. The man cheated. He had a history of cheating. And while he knew that it was a feeling he should have grown out of, a suspicion that he wasn't proud of and really shouldn't foster, Jon didn't trust the man.

Don's keys jangled in the lock, and Jon stayed at the dining room table, writing, not making his presence known as he watched his father moving in and out of the living room, depositing bags of sports equipment in the middle of the living room rug. He didn't know how he felt about the way the man never looked away from what he was doing, how he never paused to look at the pictures on the entrance table or the the new furniture Marian had put in last summer. He wondered if it was odd that he expected his father to do something awful and yet was disappointed when he did nothing at all paternal.

Jon sat at the dining table holding his pad until his father left. Jon had watched his hands, checked the heft of his pockets, saw for himself that the man wasn't leaving with anything he hadn't brought.

When he heard his father's car pull out of the driveway, Jon stood up and swug on his coat on, threw his note pad in his bag.

Slamming a tired red Mets cap on his head, he tucked the post under his arm to make sure that he dropped the bills in the mail. Behind him, his grandmother's grandfather clock chimed that it was after noon.

He was running late.

Third period started at one, and even if he ran all the away to school, there was no way Mrs. Penn wasn't going to notice him sneaking in.

*****

Jon tried to be quiet. He knew hew as going to be caught either way but he figured the punishment would be slightly less if he pretended to give a damn whether he was disturbing the class. In front of him, Mrs. Penn was scrawling across the chalkboard, and the sheer density of numbers already made his brain go a bit numb. He'd gotten to school after the 3rd period bell rang, and it was his sheer fucking luck that his bag ripped open after the bell went silent.

At the board, Mrs. Penn glared at him, her eyes taking in his clothes, the way he was standing jack-kneed in the corner clutching the remains of his bag, her eyes moving from him to his classmates, who had given up on the lesson on the board in favor of twittering at the hellishness of his position.

She pointed to an open seat at the front of the class. Jon, realizing that he really didn't have the freedom to do anything but what she said, did as he was told and pulled out his bent and crowded notebook, and the only thing he had to write on.

A wet spitball stuck to his right ear, and as Jon wiped the smeary mess off, he figured that the benefit of sitting at the front of the class was the nobody could see the look of hatred that covered his face.

His mother asked him, constantly, to try to do well in school. To put his best effort in now so that in the future, he could live a better life, have the things that she couldn't provide for him and his brother.

It was just that sometimes, he wondered if she really understood what she was asking of him. And whether she thought it was normal for a kid to get his mother ready for work, pay the bills, and then head to school, where a bunch of bullies would mock him for the entirety of class.

He had the sneaking suspicion that, good intentions aside, Marian Leibowitz had no clue what the normal life of a 6th grade boy was supposed to be.

*****

Jon's hand was on her thigh, higher than her stockings and below her panties. And if anyone had told him that touching a girl required so much sightless clothes identification, he would have spent a lot more time looking at the underwear section of his mom's Sears catalogue than his brother's poorly hidden nudies.

But this seemed to be right. She was breathing heavily. Her eyes were closed and her lips slightly parted, wet. This could be—

"Jon. Jon, stop."

Fuck.

"Is there something wrong?" Jon pushed up onto his hands, checking her face, trying to get some kind of sign on how he could have gone wrong when he was pretty damn sure he hadn't even _done_ anything yet.

Candice pushed herself up, her blouse falling open and the white cotton of her bra distracting Jon even as he realized that he really should be paying attention to what his date was saying.

"I can't do this."

Jon just looked at her, backing up, his expression just a little more lost than he was comfortable with.

Candice shrugged, grabbing one lacy blouse sleeve and pulling it back onto her shoulder. When he saw her small, lacquered nails fastening the bottom button, his stomach twisted in his belly, forcing all the acrid liquid into his throat.

"It's just…I never thought….a car, Jon?"

He sat back, the small of his back hitting the handle of the door behind him. His mind was moving faster than he could process all the nasty things it was throwing at him, and he said the first thing he thought was reasonable.

"A hotel?"

Candice nodded, and Jon moved, already out his door and moving around the car to open hers, to hold her hand and help her move to the front of the car. She was still rearranging her skirts, smoothing them around her legs by the time Jon got in on the passenger side and buckled his belt. He couldn't help but look at her as he turned the ignition, as he shifted gear.

Candice was worrying the shiny fabric of her clutch. Her fingers would run over it, again and again, and it made him worry to see how upset she was. How she wasn't looking at him and was instead staring out the windshield.

He wanted to reach out to her, the same way he had a hundred times on a date or at a party, but thought better of it. He didn't know the rules for touching people when they gone so quickly from Touching Allowed to Please Don't. It was so uncomfortable to acknowledge that you even wanted to.

So instead he turned on the windshield to wipe around the rain that a few minutes ago he'd been thinking of as a blessing.

"Anyplace, um, anyplace in particular?"

She shook her head, and it made Jon move faster, the way her shoulders were slumping just a little. "I don’t know."

Jon's oldsmobile started the bumpy reverse out of the park, and when he put his hand on the back of Candice's seat to see behind him, to make sure they were easing onto the road safely, he noticed the way her shoulders were shaking just a bit. A sniffle reached his ears, and it made him stop the car again, put it into park.

"Candice, we don't have to do anything."

The sniffles became full-blown hiccups and Jon wondered if it was just his luck to feel like a total heel on the day he was thought he'd be losing his virginity. This wasn't how other people told the stories.

He should've known that those stories, like every other fucking thing, were edited, rose-tinted exagerrations.

He rested his hand on her shoulder. When she didn't flinch, he put it around her shoulder and pulled her to him, thankful that old, inherited cars still had bench seats and he wasn't awkwardly leaning over a stick shift.

"Hey. Hey, stop that."

Which apparently wasn't the right thing to say, because she just cried harder.

Jon just hugged her harder and kissed her hair.

"You know what's the greatest thing about a girl deciding she wants you." He didn't get a response, but then again, he hadn't been expecting one.

"It means that she chose you. Out of all the options in the world, she wants you." Jon pulled Candice's head to his shoulder and kept on running his hands through her hair, watching the gold strands moving through his fingers, wondering at the way it managed to catch the light on a dark side road in the middle of no where.

"If you don't want to, not right now, not with me, then you should wait."

The car was quiet. Candice was still sniffling and her face was buried in the shirt Jon had worn just to impress her. Part of him was proud of the way he was acting, was wondering if this was a sign that he was growing up. Another part of him was screaming because he was a fucking failure and it would probably be another decade before he got a chance like this at all.

"Are you sure?"

Another uncle-like hug. "Of course I'm sure. I want what you want."

That got him a smile, a sparkle in blue eyes that had been the reason he'd approached her in the first place all those weeks ago.

Candice reached up and kissed him on the cheek.

"You're a sweet guy, Jon." Jon smiled back, hoping to hell the smile came off as genuine, and kissed her forehead before he turned back to the steering wheel.

"I'm going to take you home. That sound alright to you?" Candice bobbed her head and Jon couldn't help but notice that she was more of her normal bouncy self.

When Jon pulled up to her house, he walked her to her front door and waited until she had unlocked the front door before he turned away. He jangled his keys in his pocket as he walked back to the car, happy that Candice was happy, even if it did mean he was leaving high school a virgin.

*****

College for Jon was a surreal experience.

Jon had thought that going away to college was going to change his life. He would have independence, the physical and mental freedom to pursue whatever goals he chose. He would be an individual, capable of a living and failing, and in the end, the type of person who would construct who he was eventually going to be.

All from the experiences that he had in college.

Looking around his tiny dorm room, at the broken window in the corner sheltering the mold that grew around it's casing, Jon wondered when he had gone from naïve to just plain fucking stupid.

On one hand, he was independent. His mother wasn't responsible for him in any way, and between a lean diet and the small tuition rebate he got for playing on the varsity soccer team, he managed to make ends meet without starving, without stressing out his mother, or, worst of all, going with his hat in his hand to his fucking father.

According to some of his friends, he was the 'good son', writing home every few weeks, taking calls on the phone at the end of the hall when his mother called just wanting to know how he was doing. He had a degree plan, a major and minor, and was an athlete on top of all of that. He had his own room, his own bills, and for the most part, his own personality that had luckily survived an unfortunate foray into collegiate fraternity hazing.

The downside was that, more often than not, he felt that he was surrounded by toddlers.

He knew he was perhaps oversimplifying the situation. The kids at Mary and Wililams were, generally, smart and as responsible as you could expect supervision-free eighteen year olds to be. But as he moved from class to class, or from the cafeteria to the library to the field, he felt that he was always surrounded by kids on payphones calling home for help, or by kids shaking off hangovers and the effects thereof. All of them worrying about things that could have avoided if they had just taken ten seconds to look before they leaped.

"Jon." A damp towel thwacked him in the side of his face.

"Dammit, Peter, I told you I don't want your crotch infected laundry in my face." To show how much he meant it, Jon threw his roomates towel on their kitchen floor that probably hadn't been mopped in 4 months.

He wasn't surprised when Pete picked the towel up and slung it back around his neck.

"Me and the guy from the team are going over to Archie's after the game. Are you in?"

Jon could see the protest on his face before he'd even started to give his reply. Despite that, he shook his head and, finished cramming what he needed into his bag, headed towards the door.

"Sorry, man. Have plans."

Jon shut the door on Pete's taunts that weed and ass-banging were not plans.

It wasn't that he was expecting college to be that different from what he was experiencing. It was just that, when people had told him that leaving his mother's house and starting life on his own would be one of the hardest things he ever did, he really wished they had known what they hell they were talking about. Because, more often than not, the trouble in college wasn’t at all about courses, or games, or systemically checking off what few bills he actually had to pay.

Instead, it was the sinking feeling that he had no fucking clue what he was doing and didn't know how to go about finding out. And the part of growing up that absolutely fucking sucked was that, at least when you’re a child, there are authority figures, older wiser adults who's decisions and advice you trust.

Out of the shelter of his home, in the real world, he'd realized that authority had absolutely nothing to do with experience or wisdom, and that most of the people he hung out with didn't know any better what to do than he did.

It all made his brain hurt and his heart race because the dichotomy of being 20-something seemed to be that everyone, _everyone_ , wanted him to be on a course for success, and very few people knew how to define success, what it took to get there, and what in the hell people did with it once they were there.

He had a suspicion, though, what it would take for him. Actually, the first time he stood in front of a crowd, a frat karaoke microphone in his hand, and felt the wave of laughter hit his chest, he had the sneaking suspicion that life was going to throw a him a curveball that would make things even more complicated, and not necessariliy more fruitfull.

It was why he'd started smoking weed.

He'd just been a freshman, in the library reading a psychology book, and the images of his father the physicist and his mother, the special education teacher, had looked down on him and started weeping spectral tears at the sight of him writing down jokes instead of notes.

What he could say. He was a Jew, and the stress of the non-existent criticism had made his head hurt. His heart hurt, and he hadn't even told them yet what he was thinking of doing for a living.

Peter had handed him a joint, saying he needed to chill, and unlike the version of him from highschool, who thought weed was a fun diversion, this older, far more confused version thought that the hazy place between lucidity and sleep was just what he needed.

Which was another problem with college. He had never thought , from the movies or from Larry's stories, that it was a place where a student could be high as a kite and still successfully write an exam.

But he had, and he still continued to, and now, standing in front of a beerish microphone and a dimly-lit crowd, he had the passing thought that every entertainer had to be three sheets to the wind on something to want to put themselves through this. To consider this kind of heart shredding panic _practice_.

He wanted to be a comedian. He wanted into a world where he could wear his best jeans and a soccer jersey and get paid to make the same assholish comment that he'd been writing down on bargain basement notepads since he was ten.

"Hey Fucker, you gonna say something?"

Jon looked up from where he'd gotten lost in the microphone. He squinted past the spotlight, into the room, wondering what jackass had chosen to make this harder than it already was.

He tilted the microphone to the left, balancing it on the end of the stand. He never held it anymore. His hands sweat so much that a microphone squirmed in his hand like an eel, and he knew that one day, if he tempted fate, he'd drop it.

"Nuh-uh." The audience tittered, not quite sure if it was allowed to laugh at a comedian who wasn't making a joke.

Maybe his self-doubt was right. He'd thought he had a polished set. He'd been working on this bit for months before even thinking of signing up for open mic night, and then given himself a few more weeks before he actually had to take the stage. And yet, despite a pocket full of jokes he thought would kill, here he was, staring as some stranger in the audience who had called him an asshole.

He had never been gladder that the lights in the room were low, that they could probably hide the appalling red that was probably climbing up his neck.

But onward, right?

So Jon just shook his head at the fucker and gave his best Jersey nebbishy grin.

"Not at all. I'm just gonna stand here and listen to you make an ass of yourself. Please continue."

Some people in the audience thought it was cute. A few even clapped.

Jon turned left towards a pretty little brunette he'd seen at the table before he 'd started his set. Strength of will and a little escapism let him put aside the hellacious start to his bit, and he just moved on, flirting a little shamelessly with a girl who was out of his league.

He'd stay to see the end of the open-mic before heading back to his car. Everyone else here was new, but he was already starting to learn that everyone had a schtick and every approach had it's merits. He could use all the the help he could get.

Jon fingered the single blunt he had in his pocket to take him down after the show. His mouth moved through the jokes and in his mind he saw the piles and piles of sports equipment and the bag he'd used to bring his good clothes in the trunk of the shitty car he'd borrowed to make it out to the club tonight.

Mocking himself, cursing his thinking that even a few minutes on stage would be enough to catch the attention of the little brunette in the corner, Jon crossed the stage again to wrap up his routine.

*****

Jon absent-mindedly wiped the towel on the bar's filthy surface. He'd decided years ago that if customers could actually see how dirty the bar was, if they knew what it looked like during the day, with the windows open and unforgiving sunshine flooding the place, they'd tip him to _not_ make things worse with a dirty, wet towel.

But they didn't know any better, and Jon was bored, and wiping the bar down made it look like he was working for his paycheck and increased the chance that his boss wouldn't fire him from the first steady job he'd had in New York since he'd moved here.

In front of him, a redhead was wearing a skirt short enough to make Jon thankful he'd never broken the six foot mark. She twirled her ankle in time with her drink, and when she saw Jon looking, she ran one hot pink nail lingeringly across the wood of the bar.

Which, unlike most men, made Jon think about how filthy the bar top was and how she would definitely have to wash her hands if they ever made out.

That was the good thing about bars, the unexpected perk to a job he hadn't expected would be his fall back when he'd moved to the city. Every one of them was full of misfits, people who were singular studies in how humanity wasn't homogeneous and yet could be very predictable.

He constantly changed jobs, worked wherever he could between paying gigs, but when asked he always opted for barwork over anything else. It was material writing itself. His only contribution was interpretation.

And, in bars, most people didn't care about the quality of his work, so long as he did it neatly.

"Dirty Mary and a Whiskey and Coke." Jon nodded to man in front of him, eying the pressed slacks and button up coat while he scooped ice into glasses. He wondered what that was like, choosing to come to sleazy city bars as entertainment instead of whatever it was that this guy could afford to be doing instead.

"Here ya go. One Dirty Mary. One Whisky and Coke. Ten dollars." The man pulled out his wallet and placed on a twenty on the bar. When Jon went to take it, his hand pressed down on it, refused to let Jon do his job. Jon cursed in his head, wondering if this prep would be the kind of asshole who would insist he get free drinks or ask for a discount.

"I've noticed you work here a lot."

Jon nodded, still wary. It paid sometimes to humor people, to avoid fights. "Usually."

"And you like your job?"

Something about the man's stance, the way he wasn't aggressive, the way his body was leaning over the bar toward him clicked, and Jon realized that he was being hit on.

He tugged on the bill, wondering if the burn he could feel climbing up the back of his neck was visible in the low light.

"Yeah, it's a great place. The manager's nice." The stranger let go of the twenty, and Jon turned towards the register to make change. The stranger's voice followed him.

"I'm Mike. And you are?"

"Jon." Jon put Mike's change on the counter, wondering how you went about turning a man down, if it was his fault the guy was hitting on him. He wondered if he'd given a signal he hadn't intended to and damned himself for being surprised to be hit on in a bar in New York like this was Georgia or something.

There were some things that Lawrenceville, New Jersey didn't prepare a guy for.

"And Jon, do you have a few minutes to take a break with a guy who'd like to buy you a drink?"

Jon's mouth worked without his input, and he had the suspicion that his eyes were big as saucers. "You already have drinks."

"My turn to make a bar run." He nodded towards a table in the corner. "But maybe something for the two of us…in 20 minutes or so?"

Jon looked at the man in front of him, seeing the pressed slacks and crisp shirt in a new light. This is how he dressed when he wanted to impress women. The lines Mike were dropping were smoother than anything he had in his arsenal.

He was being hit on by a catch, and every gay man in New York was going to burn him in effigy for turning down a prize just because his dick wasn't interested.

On instinct, Jon reached for the sludgey towel he'd discarded earlier and started wiping down the bar.

"Surely it isn't that hard a decision? I promise I don't bite." Jon bit his lip, and, hoping his instinct wasn't going to get his ass kicked, put a hand on top of Mike's.

"Mike? Well, Mike, I'm honored that you're asking, but no thank you."

Jon worried as Mike leaned back and crossed his arms over a surprisingly intimidiating chest. He wondered briefly if this is what a woman felt every time she turned a man down. He vowed not to feel quite so spiteful when a woman gave him his papers.

"Not your type?"

"Not my sex."

Mike snorted, drank from the whiskey and coke, and looked at Jon over the rim of the glass. His gaze was appraising, and Jon felt it move from the top of his head to as low as could be seen with the bar between them.

It was an unnerving sensation. But nice enough that he found himself blushing again, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Mike pushed the change across the bar, and smiled, politely, without a trace of pressure. "I'm sorry for the misundersting." Jon couldn't help but notice that he took one last glance before heading back into the dark with his drinks.

Jon watched, wondering what mental experiment he was running, watching a man walk away, evaluating his worth, when he was never going to take him up on his offer. As Mike's back blended in with the dark shadows too far away to see, Jon shook his head of it's newly acquired fuzz. Just another story for the notebook. Another example of why nowhere was like New York.

There was a lull in the stage noise, and Jon took a moment to look towards the mic, wondering who was going to come on stage next.

This bar was small. Not what he'd envisioned when he was in college and imagining the great comedy bars of New York, but this was the real thing. Last night, he'd seen George Carlin try out a new set, seen him stumble on a punchline and still kill with material that was so new it hurt to hear.

And now Ben was up front, switching out the water glasses, and in his mind's eye he heard Richard Lewis as he had been back stage, when Jon went to introduce himself, to talk to him a bit while he waited in what the bar counted as a green room. Jon had thought he was surprisingly kind, and wondered how, in his frenetic, cocaine driven frenzy, he still created a rhythm and a timing that Jon would cut his left arm off for.

Not that he'd actually choose the left arm. He liked his left arm. It held on to the hand he jerked off with.

Jon saw his manager nod at him from the left side of the bar, and undid his apron, moved the jets for the soda fountain back into their holsters. He rearranged glasses on the countertop waiting for Cody to come on shift and watched as, beside him, a young lady, a bottle blonde about two more drinks from going to bed with the fossil next to her, pointed to her martini glass.

It was only one more order, so Jon smiled before he turned away while he poured the vodka into the tumbler. He only gave a passing look at her date, but something about his body language must have set the man off because, as he pushed her drink across the rough wood of the bar, the hulk grabbed the blonde's wrist and yanked her towards a table closer to the door.

He wondered what it meant that he'd been hit on and gracefully turned down a guy that night, but had been rejected by a woman he hadn't even had a chance to speak to.

He wondered when a part of him had learned to ignore the yanking, the look of disgust on the blonde's face. When he'd started to think that women like Bottle Blonde had to learn from their mistakes.

Cody came to the bar and Jon smiled as he put his cap on.

He jangled his keys in his pocket and decided that learning from the pros on stage had cost him a bit of his soul.

Of course, that also meant he still had a bit of a soul left to lose to trying to get into showbusiness.

*****

Louis watched his friend move around his tiny apartment dressed in baggy cargoes and old t-shirt, his entire ensemble covered by a tattered and well-loved apron.

"You are a weird dude, Jon."

Jon flicked him off as he reached into the oven to pull out their dinner. "Shut up. Wipe down the table."

Louis looked over the glorified card table Jon had covered with a sheet and snorted. "Yes, Mrs. Leibowitz. Anything else you need?"

Jon closed the oven door with his foot and set their chicken on top of the stove with a sigh of frustration. "I hate this stove. How in the hell can it burn chicken?"

"More pertinent question, Jon: How in the hell can you come down from a weed high and cook a three course meal?"

"I wanted to cook. It's not like your ass has anything else to do right now. You should be fucking thanking me for calling you instead of Denis."

"It's a whole fucking chicken, Jon."

"I'm hungry."

Louis felt his eyes starting to tear up from the laughter, and sat down in one of Jon's chairs. "So let me get this straight, so that for eternity I can mock you accurately.  
You, broke as fuck, invited me out here into the ass-end of Brooklyn at 3 in the morning, not for weed, but for overcooked green beans."

"Which you need. "

"Says who."

Jon put the last bowl down in the middle of the table and sat down in his seat with his apron still on. He pointed the tines of his fork at Louis and asked with mock seriousness, "When was the last time you ate your vegetables?"

C.K. smirked as he scooped a dollop of overcooked greens onto his fork. He stirred them into his mashed potatoes. "That's not the fucking point. There better be weed after this."

"After you eat your vegetables."

*****

From everything he'd seen, Denis wasn't happy with her. He came to him all the time complaining about the time they spent together. Whenever they went out, the two of them never talked to one another, never said anything kind to each other or about each other.

He loved Denis. He'd known him for a long time. And he really hadn't thought he'd been that out of line when when he'd said, quite honestly, that maybe Denis should reconsider asking the woman to marry him. It just seemed to him that if you were planning to marry someone, they should make you happy. They should be good for you and make you want to be better for them.

And now, he was on the shit end of a scream fest. His head hurt, and even though he was eighteen hours into his day, the sun was just coming up and the bright sunshine coming through the kitchen window made him feel like a douchebag for not being more happy.

So, he just played stoic as well as he knew how, and just stood, with his back to the fridge while he watched Denis pace, back and forth.

It would be easier if he knew what to do. He didn't know what to do, and that, more than anything else, was the most frustrating part of the whole situation. And while he could see why what he was saying might be insulting, watching out for his friend wasn't _wrong_. It couldn't be.

"What do you expect me to do? Go over there and fix it? Pat her on the shoulder and say 'Sorry. Miscommuncation'." Jon stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray they kept on the kitchen counter. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I fucked up and was a rude interfering little shit. But don't tell me that I'm wrong or that you've never fucked up in your life."

Denis turned to look at him, and something about his look made Jon want to not enter the living room. It made him notice the good eight inches Denis had on him that he usually ignored and the wiry muscles underneath his t-shirt.

Denis, despite the trash-talking, leather wearing persona that he had crafted for the stage, was from a sheltered family. He wouldn't harm a fly.

Now his eyes were wide, furious. His hands were on his hips and they made cutting movements through the air.

"No, Jon. This shit, this shit right here, is why you can get fucking irritating." Denis prowled the room in front of him, ripping his hand through hair that desperately needed a cut.

Jon crossed one leg over the other, hands in his pocket. Like he didn't know that. It felt like admitting defeat, like giving in, but he moved his gaze to the linoleum floor and kept it there.

"I'm sorry, Denis. I just thought—"

"No. _No._ Stop right there." Denis walked to him, knelt down just enough so that his face was in Jon's, his anger inches away and unavoidable. "The fact of the matter, Jonny, is that nobody gives a good goddamn what you think. I don't, and Lorraine doesn't, and if you had an ounce of common fucking sense you'd know to keep your giant fucking nose out of it."

"Denis—"

"I'm moving out tomorrow."

"What? I know your upset, but this was a _misunderstanding_ , and we're both mid-tour—"

"I don't give a shit. I can't take this crap anymore. " Jon could only watch in bewilderment as Denis's long legs carried him to his room before Jon even had a chance to stand. By the time he was in the room with him, Denis had a bag over his shoulder and was tucking his wallet into his back pocket.

"I love you, Jonny. You know that. But this shit? You gotta get a grip on it."

Jon watched him walk to the door and slam it. Some part of his mind told him that it probably wasn't normal to just stare at it afterwards.

*****

He wasn't nervous. Not at all.

Jon put his notepads in his bookbag and kissed Tracey at the coffee table before he headed out the door. She gave him a corny thumbs up over her morning coffee and he adored her for it, but he knew if he took a moment to think about it now it would start the whole worry-panic spiral starting all over again.

And now wasn't the time.

It wasn't that he _didn't_ worry about the new show. He was taking over the slot of an established host, a guy who was apparently good enough to get his own slot on network tv. Madeline had made it clear that at least for the first few months he'd be working with Kilbourn's cast, Kilbourne's skits, and, fucking hell, wearing Kilbourne's suits.

But that was okay. Because, in the end, out of all the talent in New York who would have jumped at the chance for their own show, they had pulled Jon's name out of the hat and he refused to let the opportunity pass him by. Four shows in ten years had taught him that not only was he willing to do damn near anything on TV, but that working on a show that tanked wasn't the end of the game.

Of course, four shows in ten years sounded better than _five shows_ , so it was up to him to make sure that this one lasted as long as it could.

He was excited, if he let himself be honest. His keys turned in the lock of his office, on his show, and he felt that there was going to be something fundamentally different here than what he had done at MTV. This show had to be entertaining, but wasn't making a grab at being cool. This is was a comedy network, and so putting his own stamp on the writing, moving it beyond just puns and easy jokes, was something that he not only had the license to do, but something that, if he could pull it off, would make this his show in more ways that just having his name below the marquee.

It was a great feeling, and if he had to, he would ride it all the way through the day and into his first taping until he had a chance to go home to Tracey and let her know every single honest thought that had danced through his brain that day.

"Jon. We're ready in the break room."

He looked up from his desk that was still so new that he wasn't sure what order he wanted to put things on it. He'd just turned his computer on, and it was already saying people were e-mailing him things about the show. The persistant hopping of his e-mail icon made him smile.

"Alright, let me grab my notes and I'll be right there."

He had an extra large coffee from the store down the street. He also had a bagel dripping with cream cheese, but perhaps working with cream cheese smeared across his face wasn't the best impression to make on their first production day.

Jon closed his office door behind him and walked towards the break room, wondering if he could pull off just starting the work or if he was going to have to give some little pep talk. In front of him, walking side by side, were two correspondents, Mo and...Steve?, whispering to each other, apparently completely unaware that he was there.

It as childish, but Jon made sure to walk lightly.

"It's a great idea, Stephen, I don't know why all of a sudden you're so worried what someone's going to think. Like that's slowed you down before."

"Yeah, but back then I was working on two shows with the blessing of the host. If this guy doesn't like what I do, and Strangers starts to tank, I'm up shit creek."

"Yeah, and if you don't say anything and just play like your brainless spackle, he'll wonder what the hell your doing on the cast."

Jon cleared his throat. "Hey guys, what's going on?"

Mo gave Steve a look, and he smiled, shrugging his shoulders. "We were just discussing an idea for a piece."

"What idea?"

"Weeeelll….Craig sent me out to Arizona to do this piece on people who were cockfighting behind the local supermarket." Jon snorted, and looked up, waiting for the punchline.

"And while it seemed funny on paper, most of that footage isn't very funny." Jon frowned, wondering what that meant as far as material for the show.

"But, the entire time I was there, I was driven around by this little old lady named Eileen. I think we have more than enough to—" the man hesitated, running his hands through the back of his hair. "Well, I was thinking Driving Miss Daisy meets Cops."

Jon felt the smile stretching his face before he even said anything. He clapped the man on the shoulder, leading him towards the break room. "That's sounds like a great bit, Steve."

"Stephen."

"Stephen. Just remind me a few more times. I'll get it right."


End file.
